Unplugged
by Johanna
Summary: Carmine awakens from a dream of pursuit and a question dominating her mind: What is The Matrix?


**April 1st.**   
          Something weird has happened. Maybe I've got to quit smoking dope late at night, but I don't think it's that simple.   
          It's 3:15AM and I'm really confused. The last thing I remember was getting a little high around midnight and deciding to grab a cab over to the all night-diner on 4th and 60th for a milkshake. Milkshakes and munchies always go together. But I must have blacked out, or something, because I just woke up - at home, in bed - remembering a really strange dream. What the fuck?   
          The dream. It wasn't quite a nightmare, but it was unsettling. I'm writing it down in this book, rather than on my computer, because I think I should. Intuition was what made me get up in the middle of the night when I was five years old and find an electrical fire just starting in my parents' TV room - it's also what revealed my ex-boyfriend Steve as a two timing louse, so I listen to it.   
          Whoa, get back on topic, Carmine. This is a lot harder when I can't just delete random tangents.   
          The dream. It was the middle of the night - about when I thought I'd go get a choco-banana shake in the real world - and I was running through midtown up by the Guggenheim - chasing some guy. I can't remember his name, but I remember thinking - knowing - that this man was very dangerous and I had to catch him. All I could see of him was his back - tee shirt, jeans and running shoes, but I knew his face - pale, and round, with blue eyes and short brown hair. But I can't remember his name. I think I knew it, at the time, but it faded with the dream.   
          Everything was crisp and clear, extremely clear. It had finished raining a few minutes before, and I could smell the wet concrete and oil in the road. As I moved, I felt like I knew everything. Exactly where I was, the registration number of the cabs that I passed by, menu of the crappy Chinese restaurant on the corner. I knew it all.   
          We were running west across town and although I chased him for what seemed like miles, I wasn't tired - I was infused with that inexhaustible energy you always have in dreams, but never in real life. Even though my feet were hitting the sidewalk so hard I thought my teeth were going to shake out of my head, I didn't really feel uncomfortable. The only thing I felt with the absolute importance of catching the guy in front of me.   
          It seemed to last forever, despite the speed with which we tore across town, and my would-be target went everywhere - down alleys, over walls, even across the roofs of the brownstones up by the Met.   
          At one point, I ran past a picture window, and saw myself. I wasn't me, exactly. First person point of view, but that person wasn't me. For starters, I was a guy - slender build and short dark hair - and wearing dark suit and dark shoes - an outfit totally unsuited for running like hell through midtown Manhattan. But since when do dreams make sense?   
          Eventually, I lost the guy I was chasing. I was angry - _furious_ - and finally starting to feel a little sore. But I knew I'd catch him sooner or later. I just had to keep looking and I knew I wasn't going to give up.   
          And that's when I woke up at home, in bed. There's a chocolate shake from the all night diner on the floor next to my futon, so I guess I did go out and get that, but how the fuck did I get home? Was I that stoned?   
          I don't know if I should be scared or not.   
          Everything was so damn clear!   
          I'm going to do some drawing, try to unstuff my head. I feel like I'm trying to process an entire movie shown at high speed. 

**April 1st**   
          Well, that was a bad introduction…No more fat joints before bed, I think.   
          I guess there's no correct way of starting a journal, but I don't think transcripts of weird dreams is it. Minor silver lining: I got some good images from it. The sharp edges faded once I managed to get to sleep, but I had already sketched a few of them - including 'my' face. Not a bad looking guy, but not how I'd envision myself as a male. Strange.   
          It's my birthday, which proves that Mother Nature has a sense of humor. My friend, Jennifer, gave me this beautiful diary for a birthday present. She told me that I spend too much time drawing pictures and not enough time writing words. Of course she'd think that, she's a writer, so she's biased.   
          My name is Una Carmine. Well, it is now. I was born Una Taylor but as time passed, I had reason to change it.   
          I'm 27 years old, I live in New York City - good fortune gave me a decent inheritance, enough to buy a small studio on the very low east side - and I'm... well, I'm a contradiction.   
          Half of the time, I'm an architect. The other half of the time, I'm a painter - of pictures, not houses.   
          I took my degree in architecture at the Rhode Island Institute, with a minor in fine art. I work for a small, healthy company in midtown - Mills and Frank - which specializes in homes for ludicriously rich people. Rich clients can afford the kind of crazy stuff I think up. My boss wants me to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright, but that's never going to happen. I can't spin ideas as fast as Wright did and my designs are actually habitable. I don't care if that sounded catty, this is my goddamned diary.   
          The reason why I'm not designing pretty houses all the time is the reason why I only work half of the year. When I'm not sweating over blueprints, I'm cursing at a canvas.   
          Painting is a compulsion, really. I couldn't stop if I wanted to - and I don't want to. If this journal was to fall into the hands of some archeologist, two hundred years from now, and they wanted to pigeonhole my work, I guess I'd say I'm an abstract expressionist. What that really means is I paint whatever the hell I like.   
          I paint for myself, not for a living, which is good, as it's a red letter day if I sell more than one canvas a month. A couple of galleries show my work, but they're of the hidden-basement-in-SoHo types, not the glittering multimillion dollar opening variety. That's why I have my 'practical' job - to keep myself fed.   
          Una is the name I leave on blueprints and Carmine is what I sign on canvas. It's the fault of going through a red period when I was in high school. I liked the sound of the two names together, and just started going by it. Both halves of my life in a single unit.   
          I like movies, Chinese food, Central Park in the daytime and Testor's Bright Scarlet enamel - in the right context.   
          My hand's cramping - writing on a table isn't the same as painting on an upright canvas. I think that's enough for now. 

**April 2nd**   
          At the moment, I'm in my painting phase, and have been for a month. I worked like a dog through the winter and then threw my plans at my boss for execution. I'm damn lucky to have an employer who's trying to fulfill his failed artistic aspirations through me. How else could I pull a runner four or five months out of the year - usually during building season no less? But my boss, Eric Mills, has known me since I was about ten - he knew my family - so he understands me pretty well.   
          The ideas are flowing like molasses in winter at the moment, but it's always like that for the first few weeks. I've got to warm up. I've got six sketches pinned on my wall - one from that dream I had - but nothing is really moving me. I'm not worried.   
          Sometimes I think about quitting the building business and trying to make a go with the art, full time. But that idea usually caves right around month five, when my savings are running out and I'm craving steak. I think I could make it work - the art thing - if I didn't have blueprints and building codes cluttering up my mind even when I'm not at the office.   
          I really would like to make that work - I guess living by painting is my dream - but I'm just too used to being able to afford dinner out, or going to the movies when I want to. Drat. 

**April 3rd.**   
          I wonder if I should keep my dream record in here, too? I don't dream very often, but when I do, they're extremely vivid, and sometimes they're a source of ideas. I usually keep them on disk, on my computer – because I can type a lot faster than I can write – but that nightmare the other day.... It was too vivid .Pixels on a screen wouldn't have done it justice. Ink and paper kept it real… 

**April 8th.**   
          I must be losing my mind. Too much coffee and too much Dali. That has to be it. I keep seeing faces I know I've never seen before, walking on the streets.   
          I was heading over to MOMA and I guess the President was in town or something, because the whole block was crawling with Secret Service types. The problem – the whole root of the freakedness – is that I recognized one of them, and I know that I don't know anyone in the Secret Service.   
          He was tall, dark hair fairly tan and with that hard face that all serious bodyguards have. He stood outside the MOMA looking stone cold, but I knew him from that goddamn dream I had – where I was chasing some guy across town. The man outside MOMA had my face. Or rather, I had been wearing his.   
          I'm sweating. Since when does ganja cause flashbacks? 

**April 9th**   
          Maybe it's just a breakdown instead. I woke up yesterday with a migrane like a spike in the back of my skull and two hours late for my appointment with my agent, Elaine. Good thing she had forgotten about it, too - that's kind of unusual for her, but lucky for me. She's usually the one bitching about my nocturnal ways. For an artist's agent, she sure doesn't understand eclectic sleeping habits.   
          We were supposed to stop by Ernesto's gallery and bully him into including one of my pieces in his next showing, but the whole day had already been fragged. Maybe tommorow. 

**April 15th.**   
          I'm going to kill someone! Starting with that fuckwit Ernesto! I cannot believe that a so-called reputable gallery could be so fucking stupid!   
          Last week, me and Elaine dragged Ernesto over to my place, in a last-ditch attempt to convince him to include a piece of mine in an upcoming show. To my intense relief, he said yes and I had the piece in question sent to him - "Frustrated Evening". It's one of my more chaotic bits, but apparently Ernesto's customers like chaotic - it makes them feel ever more smug in their secure little upperwest lives or something.   
          Anyway, so I send the canvas over. Everything is fine. Until today. The show opened today, so, of course, I went. Even us nobodies have to do the grip-and-grin routine, right?   
          I get there and - no canvas. He hadn't hung the piece as promised. So, I'm a bit steamed. I've been flaked out on before, so I'm not entirely surprised, and not extremely pissed - yet.   
          So I ask Ernest "Hey, what happened to my painting?" and he says "Madre de Dios!" in that Latinate fag way of his, apologizes profusely and says he _forgot_.   
          Right. Forgot. A gallery owner _forgets_ to put a potential money-earner on his wall. What that really means is "I got a last minute contribution that will make me ten times as much. Your little piece of crap is behind my refrigerator."   
          _Now_ I'm pissed. "I get the idea." I tell him. "Just give me the picture and I'll go home."   
          But Ernesto keeps insisting that he forgot, that he didn't mean to insult me, that if I just give him time, he'll find a place for it, honestly. Sure. Right. It took him a week to arrange the twelve pieces he's currently showing, I'm sure he'll just happily jam _Frustrated Evening_ in any old place. I told him I wasn't taking any of that shit, give me my painting now, goddammit.   
          Ernesto vanishes in back, fluttering excuses, and comes out five minutes later looking like he just swallowed his own feces. "I-it's not there." he stutters.   
          "And it's not out here." I tell him - that artist's eye always spots the little things. "So where the fuck is it?" I'm not very gracious when I'm getting jerked around.   
          Ernesto squeaked like a mouse. "I don't know. It's gone."   
          Gone? Oh, this is just getting better and better.   
          I tell him to find that painting, or I was going to tell every artist in town about his incompetence. Even a newbie like me can make a lot of noise - especially when I'm right.   
          Naturally, Ernesto know this, and he looks for my piece. Well, his little underlings, looked. He had to maintain appearances with his guests and the other artists - most of whom were putting distance between themselves and me, like bad luck is catching.   
          Practical upshot: _Frustrated Evening_ is on a trash barge headed for New Jersey. It seems that one of Ernesto's particularly stupid employees tossed the brown-papered canvas onto the dumpster. What kind of halfwitted worker at a gallery

throws a canvas away? If my reputation was anything at all, I'd suspect sabotage but, as it is, that's out of the question.   
          I'm going to get drunk now - but not before I call Elaine, whichever lawyer she recommends, and the New York Times. 

**April 18th.**   
          God, getting drunk didn't settle anything. It just gave me an amazing headache and a mouth that tastes like a bathroom rug.   
          Litigation and the media aren't being any goddamn consolation either. The lawyer's good enough - his name's Robert Carson - but he never returns my calls. He's perfectly happy to talk to me, but I have to chase him down. The NYT swore they were going to call back, and haven't.   
          Unfortunately, I'm too law abiding to cut Ernesto's balls off. Assuming he has any. 

**April 20th.**   
          Did I just fall off the face of the planet? Or did everyone decide to become flakes while I wasn't looking? I was supposed to have lunch with Eric Mills - my boss - and he blew me off. He left me sitting at Pasand like some kind of idiot for _two hours_. When I got to a phone and called him, he gave me the same bullshit line from Ernesto, "I forgot! Honest!"   
          I'm the artist around here, I'm the one who's supposed to be flaky. Not that I am. Eidetic memory can do that to you. I don't like to talk about that, though, because people seem to think I'm some kind of freak. Some people have perfect pitch, or a refined sense of touch. I've got a memory by Kodak, that's all. 

**April 25th.**   
          Calming down a bit. Jennifer came over and had a few drinks - told me about the time she lost her screenplay on the subway, a few years ago. I keep telling her she should take cabs.   
          Carson tells me I can sue Ernesto for punitive damages, but I don't know if I will. What's the point?   
          There's certainly not much point to tossing in my regular career if art means bullshit like this every day. 

**April 30th.**   
          Just when life becomes most aggravating, something comes along and makes it weirder.   
          I saw the guy from my dream, the one I had on the 1st. Not the Secret Service type, but the one I was chasing.   
          I've been painting for a couple of days, trying to work out some of my frustration, and I needed air to get the smell of paint thinner out of my nose, so I went for a walk.   
          I saw him at a coffee shop in the village. It's a nice Sunday morning today. In New York, nice Sundays seem to only happen in movies - and every resident of the city was jockeying for sidewalk space with their morning danish and Sunday edition.   
          I was just looking at faces, like I always do, when I saw him. He didn't even notice me - although I nearly fell into traffic when I saw him. He looks like he's in his mid-30's, middle class clothes, but fit – like he works out. Otherwise, completely average. Round face, blue eyes, brown hair. Even though I didn't see his face in that dream, I recognized him immediately.   
          _Maybe I've seen him in the neighborhood before?_ I thought. _Before the first, and my subconcious just processed him into a dream?_ But I knew that wasn't true. My memory means I rarely confuse a face.   
          So I decided to talk to him - I couldn't just walk away from this.   
          He was alone at his table, with a latte and a spiral bound notebook in front of him.   
          Wading in, because that's the way I am. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you." Another lie in my long life. "But have we met?"   
          I must have struck him as a desperate woman trying to pick him up, but it was all I could think of. Still, he didn't seem to mind a long-haired pretty twenty something saying hello.   
          He smiled. Shame he wasn't my type – too yuppie-looking. "No, I don't think so. You are…?"   
          "Carmine." In my painting phase, that's my name. Sure, it's a little juvenile, but it's my life and my name.   
          "No, I don't think we've met." He replied, friendly enough. Damn, drat. How can I tell a guy "Sure, we've met! I dreamed about you last week!" Even in this city, I don't think that would go down well.   
          "I'm Sean Mackenzie." he added. Helpful guy.   
          I glanced at the notebook in front of him, just because it was there, really. He was doing what looked like a 'cluster exercise' in the book - a sort of doodle for words. I happened to catch a glance at it before he slammed it shut like it was going to bite me. Despite that, I saw some of what he was writing and, honest to god, I can't explain what happened next.   
          The core of the cluster was the word "Morpheus" – the Latin god of sleep, and all these other words spreading off it – including _internet, reality, terrorism, US Banks, Freedom of Information Act_ and what looked to be a big helping of international conspiracy.   
          When I saw that name – Morpheus – I blurted something without even knowing why.   
          "You won't find him. You won't find Morpheus." Where the fuck did _that_ come from? I don't know, and it came out of _my_ mouth.   
          Sean looked like I had hit him with a brick – completely stunned. "How do you know that?" he demanded.   
          "Because of the Matrix?" It came out as a question because I didn't understand what the hell I was saying.   
          "What do you know about The Matrix?" he was whispering – as if anyone could hear him over the street noise.   
          "I don't-" I wanted to tell him what was going on, even if he thought I was nuts – which he might not, since I remembered that "Matrix" was one of those words on his notepad. But I decided better of it. "Nothing." I admitted - at least that was the truth. "I just saw it written down, there." I indicated the closed book.   
          He wasn't buying it, and he was looking at me like I was a snake. Thank god we were interrupted.   
          "Hi, Sean. Who's your friend?" It was a young woman, petite and Italian. Despite the warm morning, she was clad in black from head to toe, and I figured she was like my gothic friends who declare that heat is a state of mind. My impression of her was that if anyone could thought their way past heat, she could have - very intense.   
          "She's not really a friend." Sean said, trying to play it cool and failing. "Shall we get going?" he really wanted to get away from me, and I could see that his friend sensed that.   
          "Sure, sure." She gave me a strange look, like she was looking right through me, and then she and Sean left without any kind of comment.   
          What the fuck is going on? What's putting words in my mouth?   
          I'm going to have a really long talk with Jake about that weed he sold me last month. 

**May 14th**   
          I've been trying to look up urban legends about this Morpheus/Matrix thing. Sean's cluster had the look of dedicated conspiracy theorist about it, so I figured I might find something on the internet about it.   
          Answers: Morpheus is either a conglomerate of urban myth, or the most prolific electronic terrorist who ever touched a keyboard. The articles I've found are split on if he's an individual, a collective entity or he if exists at all. Either way, I suspect is that surfing the web about this dude set off a huge number of red flags over at the NSA. I was using the computers over at the library, so I hope the counterespionage crew don't bust in there with machine guns and double-oh-seven tech…   
          The Matrix: nothing. Not a word. I found a couple of computer games using that title, but that was all. There was nothing to connect the two of them.   
          Fuck. I'm going to call my shrink. 

**May 16th**   
          So much for the shrink. Memo to future archeologists – Jungians are full of shit. 

**May 17th**   
          If I didn't think that NYC cops are only good for consuming donuts and beating up minorities, I'd be calling them right now.   
          Someone broke into my apartment – while I was here!   
          I woke up at my usual time, about 9am, and discovered that someone had not only managed to break in while I slept without my noticing, but they left a message – on one of my pictures! Christ, I don't know whether to be angrier about the home invasion, or the defacing of the canvas.   
          To be honest, it has been sitting on the easel for three weeks. My inspiration kind of ran out after I put the first few layers of paint down. A message is written on it in concentrated pigment: 

**THE MATRIX HAS YOU**

          What the fuck is going on? What is this Matrix? And why is someone breaking into my house to tell me about it?   
          And that pigment costs thirty bucks a tube. 

**May 19th**   
          Never mind my becoming invisible, I've become a beacon for lunatics. I suppose after eight years in this city, I'm more than overdue for a stalker.   
          Sean's friend – the Italian woman – came to my door last night, very late. She was still wearing black from head to toe, still carried the intense manner.   
          I let her in – what else could I do? Besides, I had a question for her.   
          "Did you do that?" I asked as soon as I had closed the door, pointing at the red-scrawled message.   
          She nodded, looking neither ashamed nor smug.   
          "Alright. Why?"   
          "Why do you think I did it?" she replied immediately, leaning up against the wall. She was completely casual, like she does this all the time. That threw me. Her whole attitude threw me. She was focused, completely focused. People talk about that word, but don't really understand what it means – as attention spans shrink, our standards get lower and lower. Malachite was 100% in my apartment and concentrated upon talking to me. None of this was a joke to her - nor me.   
          A deep breath calmed me down. "If I want word games, I'll go to my shrink." I told her. "Right now, I want some answers." She smiled at that, for some reason.   
          "Then I'm the best person to ask." She sat down on my beloved, battered beanbag chair. "I'm Malachite."   
          I don't comment. I'm not one to judge another person's handle.   
          Malachite was waiting for me to say something but, honestly, I just didn't trust my mouth or my manners. I was angry, curious, nervous and defensive. Not the best combination.   
          She shrugged and finally broke the silence. "Things have been strange for you, lately, right?"   
          "Just a bit." I admitted.   
          "Your friends have forgotten you, important things have been lost like that painting of yours and you think you're hallucinating, right?"   
          "I take it you read my journal when you broke in last night?" Now I was losing the nerves to anger. What the fuck else had she been doing?   
          "Not last night, no."   
          "So you've been here more than once?"   
          "Yes." She admitted. Holy Christ, so much for my powers of observation. "But please answer my question. Things have been unsettled. Not what you expect them to be?"   
          I tried to be casual. "True enough, but life is like that." Not my life, I didn't add.   
          Malachite nodded, and pulled something out of her pocket. Two things. One was a cellphone, the other was the strangest camera I'd ever seen. It looked like something you'd find in a Gilliam movie, all unnecessary lenses and pewter filigree – but it was small, about the size of my fist.   
          In one smooth motion she flipped open the cellphone and hit a pointed the camera in my direction, it was a movie camera of some kind, as she kept it pointing at me as she spoke, and I could hear a faint whirring sound.   
          "Hey, it's me." Malachite said into the phone. "Can you read that?" Whatever 'that' was, she wasn't telling me. "Uh-huh…. Yeah. No shit? Not yet… Alright, I will." Then she clicked the phone off and jammed the camera back into her coat pocket.   
          She smiled again, even laughed a little. I got the bad feeling she was laughing at me.   
          "Care to let me in on the joke?" I asked.   
          "Sure, but not just now. I want to ask you something, but I don't want you to answer immediately."   
          "Alright, shoot." Like my life isn't surreal enough as it is. At this point, I had almost convinced myself that this was another bad-weed dream. Almost. A person can't change without risk.   
          Malachite went for it. "If you had the chance to learn the truth – the real truth – about this world, the real story behind the rumors of conspiracy, the meaning of so-called life, even if it came at the cost of changing your life – radically and forever – would you still want to know?"   
          I started to answer her, but she held up a restraining hand. "Not now. You should think about your answer - really think. I'll come back tommorow."   
          She got up, heading for the door. "I'll come back tommorow." She repeated. "And I promise you that, if nothing else, the nightmares will stop." 

          What the fuck? Do I nail my door shut and call the cops or what? I would think Malachite was a grade-A whacko if she didn't strike me as being the most well-grounded person I've met all week. My life may have turned upside down, but I have never ever ignored my hunches. An artist has to listen to those little voices and feelings that most people ignore. You learn to respect that vast reservoir of information that hovers just beneath the rational level - ans use it. 

          I'm too curious for my own good, really.   
          I think I'll hide my journal. 

**May 20th**   
          I'm sitting in the back of a sleazemart on 28th Ave wondering what the fuck I've gotten into.   
          I got a phone call from Malachite, about six o'clock this morning.   
          "There's been a change in plan." No preamble, just pure fear coming down the line - the kind of fear you can't help reacting to. "You have to leave your place. I can't come to you, but you can come to me. They can't see you."   
          "What? Who are _they_?"   
          "The agents. You've retained some of their code. There's no time for questions. Just get to Starshine Books. It's on 28th, can you find it?"   
          "Sure."   
          "Go to very back and wait for me." And that was it.   
          I decided to take my journal with me. I wasn't sure if this wasn't a ruse to get me out of the way for more breaking and entering, and I didn't want to leave reading material around for them.   
          Malachite's tone had wound me up tight, but I kept listening to that inner voice. Play it cool, it said. So I packed a few things into a bag, brushed my hair and headed out of the bulding's front door - not the fire escape.   
          I nearly puked when I walked past another one of those Secret Service clones as I reached the sidewalk. This guy was short, dark and - thank God - looking in another direction when I passed him. Never mind what kind of crack Malachite was smoking, I'm convinced that these pricks were following me. What kind of alarms did I set off when I was researching the Matrix?   
          I got to Starshine ten minutes ago - nice of Malachite to warn me this was an adult bookstore. Even the manager's office, where I'm at, is grotesque.   
          Where is Malachite? I want to know what's going on, damn it. 

**February 2nd, 2096**   
          God, my handwriting is even worse in this reality.   
          Then again, I've never really written anything before.   
          It was all just an illusion - my paintings, my journal, that entire world was nothing but a giant cage.   
          But I'm still me. At least, I think I am. I still call myself Carmine, I still want to paint and build and eat anchovy pizzas - but I just got dumped into a whole new existence. Malachite showed up at Starshine. I told her that I wanted the truth, and she gave it to me. I've been unplugged from the Matrix.   
          Shit, my hand really hurts. More later. 

**February 4th, 2096.**   
          I was never a candidate to be freed - Sean Mackenzie was. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.   
          My dream of chasing him wasn't a dream - no more so than anything else within the Matrix's reality. But I honestly wasn't myself, either.   
          The independent AI's called Agents can hop from host to host - riding Matrix captives like a horse. That's what I was when I was chasing Sean - a horse that didn't even know it was being ridden. Usually a host doesn't remember anything about such an incident - they are encouraged to rationalize the encounter away as a dream or hallucination, if they remember even that much.   
          But, of course, I had to be a freak.   
          I held on to more than a memory of that encounter - I retained a fragment of that Agent's code within my digital self. That bit of code made me invisible. There aren't that many agents - when compared to the billions in the Matrix. But when they act, it's memorable. Your average citizen in my old reality is going to notice a guy who can dodge bullets. So the Matrix depends on a combo of careful programming and conditioning to contain the fallout from its Agents' actions.   
          Ivan - my operator - explained it to me in full detail, but it made my head hurt. The short version is that after my own Agent-trip, a chunk of its code was left behind - duplicated probably. That's why I was becoming invisible to everyone around me - they were receiving a program command telling them that I wasn't really there. As I say, it makes my head hurt - but it also probably saved my life. It wasn't Ninja-powers, but it was enough to enable me to get past Agents twice without their noticing me until it was too late.   
          Shame I couldn't say the same for Sean. They got him the day after I met him in the cafe.   
          Malachite was curious about me - Sean told her all about our little conversation - and once the agents got him, she was curious as to why they hadn't whacked me yet. Hence our little discussion and the gesture with the painting. Well, the painting was just Malachite being melodramatic. She says she can't help it. Now that I know that painting never really existed, I'm much less pissed off about it being damaged... 

          So what the fuck do I do now? I'll probably never taste a real anchovy pizza, but maybe I wouldn't like it, anyway. There are some differences between my memory of myself and the reality. I'm shorter, for one thing....   
          I've got some options.   
          Zion needs architects. It would be better if I was a subway designer, but building is building. I'm told that some precincts of the city are falling apart, and they need help to rebuild.   
          Ivan says my digital-self has retained the Agent code - like it's been burned into my memory. It's a hell of an asset and it's the main reason I was unplugged.They want me to go back in there and do what Malachite does - finding and unplugging people - because I have a better chance of survival.   
          I don't know if I could do that. Malachite says I should have more faith in myself, but I'm not even sure who I am, now. How do I know that this is real? Damn, I have to have some faith, or else I'm going to lose my mind. 

**March 15th.**   
          I'm going to be splitting my time, like before. Zion needs a few months of my time - maybe more - assessing their infrastructure. By the time that's done, Malachite thinks she'll have me ready to go back into The Matrix. I can't tolerate the thought of all those people trapped like I was, so I don't have any choice. I have to help them, and I will as soon as I'm ready.   
          It should be a hell of ride. 

[More Writing By Johanna][1]

   [1]: http://members.tripod.com/~johanna_mead/write/write.html



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